At the second annual Build Communities Not Bullies event, a couple of hundred educators, parents and children took to the Clinton Presidential Park lawn to talk about stopping a familiar school problem, bullying.
A steering committee for the Arkansas Education Association's Education Support Professionals put on the event, which featured several speakers from education labor unions and students singing, dancing and reading poetry.
Stopping a bully takes only one caring adult, speakers said.
When National Education Association Executive Director John Stocks was in middle school in New Orleans, his parents let him grow his hair out long during the height of the Vietnam War, he told Saturday's crowd.
"I went to a very, very conservative school," he said.
As he walked down the hallway one day, a group of boys jumped him and beat him, calling him a "hippie." A few days after the assault, the school's football coach approached Stocks and asked him to be the team manager.
"He figured out it would change the dynamic," Stocks said.
"I know if that coach hadn't reached out to me, my life would have been different. ... It literally takes one caring adult," he said.
Several education support professionals -- including secretaries, custodians and bus drivers -- told Saturday's crowd that they stop bullying whenever they see it. At last year's event, support professionals lamented that they were not trained to the extent that teachers and administrators are to deal with bullying.
Steven Juain Young, an event coordinator, said that since last year, education support professionals have started receiving training to handle bullying in central Arkansas schools.
Melanie Barnes, 30, attended Saturday's event with 15 people, including children, from a nonprofit she volunteers for, H.O.P.E.: Helping Others Progress Effectively. She's also an English teacher at Mabelvale Middle School, where she sees verbal bullying, sometimes called "roasting."
"Some kids try to play it off like it's nothing to them, but I can see that they're hurt," she said, adding that she tries to keep such behavior out of her classroom.
"When you're comfortable, then you're able to learn," she said.
Barnes was with Jalien Edwards, a 15-year-old Little Rock Central High School student.
"I don't like it when people pick on other people," Edwards said. "Because we're all humans, and we are made of the same things," she said.
Edwards' thoughts echoed the speech of Hall High School student Breanna Bates, who questioned people's tendencies to pass judgment.
"You never know what someone goes through in their everyday lives, so don't judge," Bates said. "We're all brothers and sisters in God's eyes, so stop judging."
About a fourth of U.S. students in middle and high schools experience bullying, and about 10 percent experience cyberbullying, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. About 30 percent admit to bullying others, according to the department, and only about 20 percent to 30 percent of students who are bullied tell an adult about it.
Princess Moss, secretary-treasurer for the NEA, told the crowd she was teased growing up, when she said she was "more than a little chubby."
But she said she credits caring educators in her life for helping her when she was down. She urged adults in Saturday's crowd to take responsibility for stopping bullying.
"It is about a great public school for every student," she said. "When we make that happen, we will make a better future for students ... and the America to come."
Metro on 10/26/2014